1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mass storage cradle device that enables various types of storage devices, such as SATA, IDE, SCSI, USB, Firewire or USIB type storage devices to be easily swapped in and out of a drive bay of any desktop computers, Kiosk or computing equipment.
2. Description of Related Art
A standard desktop computer typically provides one or more compartments (also called drive bays) for the installation of 5¼ inch or 3½ inch storage devices such as CD ROM, DVD ROM or CDRW drive, hard drive, ZIP, SuperDisk etc. Because of space limitation, many desktop computers, Kiosk or computing equipment have only one to two drive bays, thus limiting the number of devices that can be installed. Once a storage device is installed into the drive compartment or drive bay, replacement or upgrade of the storage device requires careful disassembling and reassembling of the computer by a trained technician.
Data storage devices primary fall into two categories: the removable storage and hard disk storage. These two types of data storage devices offer different advantages depending on the type of applications.
In the removable storage, the storage media can be replaced as more storage space is needed. Cost of the media is relatively inexpensive. But the data transfer rate for removable storage devices in general are much slower than hard disk storage. Thus the removable storage is great for data archiving. To access the data stored on a removable storage media, the computer must have a compatible drive that can read the data from the media. Example, a CDRW drive or CD-ROM drive is needed to access the data on a CDRW media, a DVD drive is needed to access data on a DVD media, a 240 MB-ZIP drive is needed to access data on a 240 MB ZIP media. As a result, in order for a computer to access data on a variety of removable media, it must be equipped with various types of drives.
In the case of hard disk storage, the media and the drive are integrated together. With this design, the data transfer rate for hard drive is much faster than the removable storage. Thus hard disk is great for storing program files, for storing data that are accessed all the time and for streaming video application. Since the hard drive and the storage media are all integrated in one unit, the computer can access the data stored in a hard drive by connecting up the hard disk controller cable and the power cable from inside a computer to the hard drive. But this way of connecting a hard drive to a computer usually requires opening up the computer and technical skill.
External hard drive solves the problem of connecting a drive to a computer without opening up the computers. The external hard drives attach to a computer via one of the common I/O ports on a computer USB, Firewire or PCMCIA. Since all the external hard drives are constructed with an enclosure to house the hard drive and the interface electronics. The additional cost of the housing and interface electronics make the external hard drive much more expensive than an internal IDE drive. So when an external hard drive capacity is used up, the user will have to purchase another external hard drive in order to have more data storage capacity. In addition, the external hard drive with this traditional design also limits its use to a single interface. If you have an external USB hard drive, a computer that has no USB port will not be able to use the hard drive.
Most of the storage devices in the markets today come in IDE interface only. At present, the SATA (serial ATA) provides higher speed such as 1.5 Gbps, 3 Gbps even more 6 Gbps (in the future) and less cable size than the IDE Interface. The traditional design of the external hard drive does not support the SATA hard drive; therefore, it cannot enjoy the advantages brought by the SATA hard drive.
Therefore, the solution or invention in this patent deals with storage devices that has either IDE or SATA interface and only be used both in this mass storage cradle device.